Druridge Bay, an eight mile arc of sand running north from Cresswell to the harbour of Amble in Northumberland, strewn with wetlands. From lagoons stained the deepest green by summer algae to flooded tyre ruts, glinting water in the arable fields. This blog is a snapshot of research at the University of Northumbria as we explore this pondscape forged between northern sea and sky.

Saturday, 23 July 2016

High summer and the Bay’s smaller inhabitants are in their element.
With avocet chicks and egrets to admire it is easy to overlook but stop in your tracks
and get down to flower or mud level for a treat.The
ragwort flowers are currently home to swarms of shiny pollen beetles. You don’t
have to go far from the Drift Cafe to find them in hordes, along with burnet
moths resplendent in their black and red warning livery. The flower beetles are
rotund and shiny, ready fliers that ping and lift off in the afternoon’s heat.
Tempting to wonder how many there are, just for brief week. You could work this
out by counting how many on a few ragwort heads, then how many ragwort flowers along
a few paces of road, then how many paces long the coast. This would still be an
underestimate but is a good way to tune into their world. Then go back to the Drift
and have a cake to celebrate working in millions.

Next, the mud....

Down
at mud level is exciting too. Here is a carpet of mud flies on one of the subsidence
ponds at Blakemoor. Their world is a startling up-and-down,
the mud pocked and teased into blancmangy mounds. These flies expertly trace a
precise line, just above the water but not too far back where the mud begins to
harden. Presumably the shifting goo is to their liking. They tip toe, almost imperceptibly,
creeping across the ooze, occasionally taking to flight in slow drifts is your shadow
unnerves them. They do not fly far, seemingly focused wholly on their beloved
mud.

Further out on the water skate silvered long headed flies, more active,
rather piractical, although the couple on the left of the photo below apparently creeping up on a flock of mud
flies in this photo are looking for smaller prey where a film of water still overlies
the mud.

They are skittish, alternating burst of speed skating with outraged
hops and leaps if a pair approaches too close.

The heavy heat of July is their
time and a beautiful invitation into lives we overlook, which is our loss

Tuesday, 19 July 2016

The Druridge Bay open cast plan has
begun to mine a rich seam of politics. A bit like the coal the politics was
always very near the surface and, judging by a report in the Chronicle, is now
in plain view.

A few days before the July 5th
Council planning meeting the Labour shadow Energy Secretary, Brian Gardiner MP,
called on the government to call in the proposal, i.e. effectively make it a decision
for central Government. This generally means that a planning bid is either of
strategic importance and/or something on which the government has a definite opinion,
for or against, and does not want to leave to local councils. Given the sentiment prior to the meeting amongst many following the case that the proposal would
be approved such a call suggests Brian Gardiner is against and he made clear the government should stop it progressing.

His stance seems to
have angered local labour politicians, provoking council leader Grant Davey to
hit back, clearly worried about labour’s chances in forthcoming elections.The Chronicle’s report quotes a letter from Mr Davey to Labour central as
saying:

“This blatant attack on our minority administration
and the creation of a viewpoint that Labours National Energy Policy has been
written by the Green Party, will do nothing to aid Labour’s recovery in
Northumberland and as we have all out elections in May 2017 I do hope we have
time to recover from the massive damage done to our reputation by this man.”

Which makes the link between the planning
committees vote and the politics very exact, both the immediate part political concerns
of the local Labour party but also a small subtle sense of schism between the Labour
Partyseen as closely allied to the
Greens versus the local party in Northumberland rooted in proud traditions of
mining. Opposition to the mine is routinely portrayed as outsiders (the anti - signatories
from as far afield as Madagascar and Bangladesh....). Now it looks like the
fault lines are opening up between the metropolitan Corbynists and the local
labour traditionalists

Meantime
the Chartered Institute of Ecology and Environmental Management ran a pond morning
gat the bay on Saturday with people coming up from as far as Teesside to admire
the Bay’s fine wetlands. Here we are: I expect they are watching for me to fall
in.

Friday, 15 July 2016

Storm Desmond hit Hauxley Nature Reserve hard. The immediate
problem in mid-December 2015 was the flowing across the main road in into the field
with the little experimental ponds we dug out in 1994. The deluge cut off the
reserve, right in the middle of the new build. The car park was just about
accessible in a 4x4 though a hovercraft was probably the best bet. Here is a
photo, from the Wildlife Trust, looking back along the road with the flood waters spilling over into the
field on the right,home to the little ponds.

At the time we thought the waters would recede. The field by
the entrance has flooded before, even at unlikely times such as the early summer
of 1997 when an intense rain storm hit just when the little experimental ponds
would normally dry up. They didn’t dry for another two years and changed markedly.
The plants and animals that like a bit of drying out were much scarcer and
instead thick blankets of green algae took over. A couple of years later, once
the ponds had dried out again in the summer of 1999o the algae disappeared.
Animals and plants benefit from the disturbance caused by drying, creatures like
pea shrimps (Ostracoda) or rarer algae such as the stoneworts (Chara) re-appeared, maybe from drought
resistant eggs or, in the case of Stoneworts, oospores in the mud, activated by
desiccation.

Storm Desmond seems to have changed the field. Six
months on and it is still almost completely flooded over. Here are two views
from the middle of the field back to the road, across the ponds. Firstly July 2012, a very wet year, but no total flooding. On the right, the same view July
2016.

The water is not falling which begs the question is it being
topped up somehow? More pressing for the wildlife are the impacts. Gone is the
lush, flower strewn high summer wet meadow. Instead spike rush (Eleocharis palustris) is one of the few
obvious survivors and the reeds from the pond to the side of the field have pushed
out two bridge heads, their advance guard visibly snaking out into the flood.

Tuesday, 12 July 2016

Northumberland County Council have voted to approve the
Druridge Bay open cast mine application, 13 to 0 in favour. The decision and
size of the vote seemed to cause surprise but should not do. Every wise Councillor
knows you do not take decisions at meetings. That is far too clumsy and risky.
Instead they will have consulted widely beforehand and I expect every councillor
who went into that meeting had a good idea how they and their colleagues were
going to vote. A unanimous vote is also important to avoid creating more
friction and misunderstandings. Ultimately the council went for the jobs
argument which, given the deprivation in much of south east Northumberland is
understandable, at least for the mine jobs which could be counted in advance. Hard
to measure any losses that the mine might cause if other businesses suffer.
Councillors were also at pains to raise diverse points to show their awareness
of the complex issues although the criticism of the overwhelming numbers of objectors
as coming from as far away as Madagascar and Banglasdesh sounded like nervous
over reaction.

Banks and the Council will be waiting to see if the government
calls in the application, although whether there will be a functioning government
may be a more pressing problem.

The outcome might seem like a straight forward win for Banks
and the application. However the sheer numbers of objections from very local
people still leaves a very divided community. A classic conservation problem. The
avocets and egrets, harriers and pink foot are very good at looking after themselves
given the chance. Conservation is more about people who want to earn a living,
go for a walk, support a family, bird watch, revel in the peace and quiet, fear
disturbance, worry for house prices. Banks will also have a lot to live up to
and, without owning the land, are taking a risk themselves. What if the land
owner does not want the mitigation plans proposed for seven years time? After
all times change and the farming economy is likely to have changed markedly
post Brexit. What if Banks want to extend the mine area along the lines of the
earliest plans? The mine if only due to last seven years. What will happen to those
50+ jobs in seven years, are they a trump card that be played over and over again.
The Council have taken a risk too. They will want the proposal to work well.The Druridge open cast saga is far from over.